Albanese's Grayndler Creatives Push Back Against AI Copyright Proposal

In St Peters, on the walls of the Willie the Boatman brewery, a much younger Anthony Albanese looks out from the cans of Albo Pale Ale. It is a fitting emblem for Grayndler, the inner west Sydney seat he has held on a safe margin for three decades, and one he has long praised for its live music, theatre and artist spaces. Now a federal proposal on artificial intelligence is turning some of those same people against him.

The numbers explain why the issue lands so hard here. Grayndler is home to more than 3,000 cultural and creative businesses, and 10% of its workers are employed in creative fields, against 4.2% nationally. Labor is weighing changes to copyright law, as part of a wider package of AI reforms that also covers datacentres, energy and the economy. The change under consideration would give AI companies access to Australian creative work by default, as the government pursues a compromise with US tech giants.

Albanese has promised "the strongest possible protection" and has warned it would be "theft" if creators weren't paid for their work. But the industry is alarmed by what AI companies have asked for: a weakening of copyright law so they can train models on Australian material. Some firms say licensing under existing law would be too difficult. Anthropic has floated an opt-out model, under which it could scrape content unless a rights holder objected. Coalition senators and the recording industry have warned that this could amount to the government acquiring property. Labor's proposals were leaked in September, as senior OpenAI figures met Labor ministers and argued that Australian copyright law was stopping the company from training models locally. Draft laws are expected by the end of the year, with parliament to consider them in 2027.

Pete Strong, a screenprinter and Greens councillor for Bayside, runs his business from Grayndler; his solar-powered wheelie bin sound systems are a familiar sight around the inner west. He says AI could be good for humanity but has become an extraction industry mining for profit for the few. "I'm completely against" the proposal, he said, calling the moment a gold rush and the wild west. This year he curated a show titled "overthrow the algorithm" and has criticised a proposed datacentre at Cooks Cove. He sees the backlash against the government as already under way, and says it began with the datacentre uprising.

Lu Campbell-Smith, an inner west designer and artist, finds AI useful in her own practice, yet calls having to opt out "outrageous". She said it shows Australia is treated as a test market and a resource to be exploited, and asked why anyone would post anything online if they were creating free content for an AI machine.

At Tortuga Studios and the aerie, one of Sydney's longest-running artist-led spaces, set in an old brick factory in St Peters, director H Morgan-Harris, who is also an author and curator, warned the creative ecosystem could be "decimated". Her copywriting work has already been heavily affected by AI. Asked how she responded to the proposal, she said her answer wasn't one that could be printed. "Artists are the first to be thrown under the bus," she said, adding that many people were excited when Albanese won government but that there is a "yawning chasm" in recognition and protection of the sector.

Jason Zoidberg, co-founder of Monster Mouse Studios in Marrickville, said the AI industry has already stolen artists' collective labour without consequence, and found it "utterly crazy" that the government might green-light more of it. He does see one flipside: his hands-on workshops are drawing more participants, which he attributes to a local backlash against social media and AI, though he calls it a niche, a little inner west bubble.

The politics are real. Albanese has won Grayndler on first preferences alone in recent elections, but at the next federal election he will face Hannah Ferguson, 28, co-founder of Cheek Media, running as an independent. No sitting member has lost a seat from such a margin at a federal election, and without his personal popularity the seat would have been a prime Greens and progressive independent target. Ferguson is betting that popularity is fading, and Guardian Australia's latest Essential poll puts his disapproval at 56%, equal to his highest since taking office. The draft legislation, due by year's end, will show whether the opt-out model survives.